Porsche unveiled its new Cayenne EV today, and it comes with an option for something we haven’t seen out of a factory-equipped car before: inductive charging.
Over the years, we’ve heard plenty of attempts by companies to trick consumers into thinking that it’s possible to make an electric car that doesn’t need to charge.
From Toyota’s dumb “self-charging hybrid” claim, to the new fad of “range extenders”/EREVs (aka plug-in hybrids with a bigger battery), to all manner of solar vehicles, people seem to think that convincing customers that they don’t need to plug in will get them to buy an EV (or, will help them greenwash their gas-guzzling hybrids).
And now the next entry into that group has arrived: the Porsche Cayenne electric, which can indeed be driven without ever plugging in, or gassing up, or even parking in the sun.
It does have to be parked somewhere specific though: over a pad in your garage. Because this car can be equipped to use inductive charging, right out of the factory.
Inductive charging uses magnetic fields to transfer electrical power, as opposed to conductive charging, which uses a plug. Inductive charging is how phone charging mats work, but in this case, it’s scaled up significantly in size and power.
We’ve seen a few inductive charging projects before, but they’ve always been aftermarket or experimental so far. Or, they’ve been targeted more at commercial or fleet buyers (buses, for example).
There is one mass-produced EV which is rumored to have inductive charging capability, the Tesla Cybertruck, and we know that Tesla is working on a charging pad, which will be helpful if autonomous vehicles ever roll out properly. But nothing has been announced as available yet.
Porsche, however, is ready to announce that the capability is coming to its upcoming Cayenne EV. Porsche has shown off its inductive tech before, but now we got to see it ourselves when we checked out the Cayenne in a studio preview.
Porsche says that its inductive charging system can push 11kW of power, which is plenty for overnight home charging (on the car’s 113kWh battery). It does this at 90% efficiency – not as much as the ~95% of conductive charging, but still quite good. It also requires an extra ~33lbs of coils and wiring onboard the car, which is a significant if not massive weight gain.
To activate the system, the charging pad makes contact with the car via wide-band wireless communication to determine location, then activates when you park in just the perfect spot. The car’s screen shows guide lines to help you find the way to where you need to be – or there’s always the tennis-ball-on-a-string trick if you want to go low tech.
When we tried it out in LA, once we got the system up and running (hot tip: don’t daisy chain two extension cords if you want your inductive charging pad to work), it quickly charged at 11kW, at least according to the in-car system.
The inductive charger includes a lot of safety features to ensure nothing weird happens. Even though it only uses magnetic fields, the mat includes sensors to detect any living or metal objects nearby, it will stop (yes, this includes your cat that likes to sleep under the car, and yes, Porsche gets asked this question often). We saw this happen once in the studio demo, but it quickly turned back on after deciding everything was okay.
The Cayenne will still have its regular conductive charging ports, capable of 11kW AC or 400kW DC charge. But for those who want to forgo the plug, at least at home, the mat is an available option.
That said – pricing and availability are still TBD. The system costs €7k in Europe, plus an electrician, but we don’t know what it will cost in the US yet.
So, there’s still a chance that someone else beats Porsche to the “first” moniker – possibly Tesla, given that it seems to be close to offering an inductive charging system. But there are a lot of hurdles to ensure that the system is reliable in every type of weather and real world situation, and lots of electrical codes to follow. So, it looks like the race is on.
Electrek’s Take
I was quite interested in talking to the engineers about this system, because I hadn’t actually experienced inductive charging in an EV before.
People have been talking about this for a long time, and I used to be excited about the concept of electrified roads where cars could just drive on them and get a charge and never have to plug in.
However, after conversations over the years and experience with how easy driving and charging an EV is, I came to think that inductive charging is mostly a gimmick, and that we will likely rely on conductive charging in the long term (and especially that in-highway charging is a boondoggle that’s never going to be a good option, especially when catenary/pantograph systems exist).
That said, there are still niches and benefits to be had. In a potential fully autonomous future, we’ll need to figure out autonomous charging, and inductive charging could be a good answer for that.
In addition, some drivers do have difficulty with cables. While the NACS cable is much easier to handle than the old CCS cable, an older driver or one with mobility issues might have a hard time plugging in a car. Inductive charging could be good for them.
Or, heck, maybe someone is just lazy. Or doesn’t like cords. And doesn’t mind spending money for these marginal improvements. We can imagine there are Porsche buyers who could fit that description.
I still think the take rate will be relatively low, but it will be interesting to see real world tests of this, how buyers get along with it, and what sort of problems they manage to solve. As much as I’m a skeptic of inductive charging’s usefulness and acknowledger of its limitations, it’s nice to see new things get tried sometimes.
What do you think about Porsche’s inductive charging system? Would you prefer it to conductive charging? How much would you pay to add this option to your EV? Let us know in the comments.
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